Cory Doctorow on MQA

[mansr]

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/12/closed-proprietary-felonious-toxic-rainbow-locked-technology

 

[amirm]

I am no fan of Cory....

 

[mansr]

I am no fan of Cory....

Not saying I am, but it still seemed relevant.

 

[agtp]

I am no fan of Cory....

Right out of the playbook:

1) Attack the messenger/critic

 

[tmtomh]

I appreciate the article, but I don't agree with the author's definition of DRM. In fact, the article's first paragraph summarizes the problem with MQA - you can't open the file, so therefore it's closed and proprietary - and to me that's DRM.

 

[amirm]

Right out of the playbook:

1) Attack the messenger/critic

What messenger? He wrote the thing and I am telling you I know him personally and I don't like his approach one bit.

 

[agtp]

What messenger? He wrote the thing and I am telling you I know him personally and I don't like his approach one bit.

So what? Why even post that you’re “no fan”? It’s irrelevant. If you have a problem with the content, respond to that.

 

[Darwin]

I am no fan of Cory....

Cory does not know what DRM is.

 

[Darwin]

He rants on and on about DRM then says MQA isn't DRM. At least he got that right. Many others haven't.

 

[Ron Texas]

I don't see how MQA can possibly work. They take audio above 24 khz and compress it. Bats can hear it, but people can't.

 

[agtp]

He rants on and on about DRM then says MQA isn't DRM. At least he got that right. Many others haven't.

Quote mining (also contextomy) is the fallacious tactic of taking quotes out of context in order to make them seemingly agree with the quote miner's viewpoint or to make the comments of an opponent seem more extreme or hold positions they don't in order to make their positions easier to refute or demonize.[note 1] It's a way of lying. This tactic is widely used among Young Earth Creationists in an attempt to discredit evolution.

Quote mining is an informal fallacy and a fallacy of ambiguity, in that it removes context that is necessary to understand the mined quote.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quote_mining

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoting_out_of_context

 

[svart-hvitt]

What messenger? He wrote the thing and I am telling you I know him personally and I don't like his approach one bit.

He seems to be a well-known figure, numerous prizes, honorary doctorate etc.:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Doctorow

Given his focus on the interests of big corporation vs the man in the street, I see that his work may have stepped on some elephants’ feet, am I right?

Is it the content of the article you dislike, @amirm , or is it the man?

 

[JJB70]

I agree with his anti-DRM rant, but think his anti-copyright/patent rant is a bit silly. There are people who are happy to develop stuff and give it away, and use open access licenses etc, but for the most part if you want people to invest the time and effort involved in developing new technology then they will expect some financial reward for commercialising that tech and expect their intellectual property to be protected.

 

[amirm]

Is it the content of the article you dislike, @amirm , or is it the man?

I have had professional dealings with him. I find him unethical and alarmist to make a name for himself. Traveling and on the phone typing. Will say more later.

 

[svart-hvitt]

I agree with his anti-DRM rant, but think his anti-copyright/patent rant is a bit silly. There are people who are happy to develop stuff and give it away, and use open access licenses etc, but for the most part if you want people to invest the time and effort involved in developing new technology then they will expect some financial reward for commercialising that tech and expect their intellectual property to be protected.

Do you have scientific support for your copyright remark?

At what time in human history did copyright laws develop?

Have copyright laws been the source of human and societal progress?

Could progress, welfare and prosperity happen in absence of copyright laws?

 

[JJB70]

Do you have scientific support for your copyright remark?

At what time in human history did copyright laws develop?

Have copyright laws been the source of human and societal progress?

Could progress, welfare and prosperity happen in absence of copyright laws?

I didn't say copyright laws have been the source of human and societal progress, I said that if you want people to invest the time and effort involved in developing new technology then they will expect some reward for commercialising that tech and expect their intellectual property to be protected.

The last 100 years have seen a massive acceleration in the pace of technological progress and the concept of IPR is pivotal to facilitating the development behind that progress. In some cases the level of investment needed to develop and commercialise an idea is in many billions and involves huge numbers of people who all expect to be paid. How many bodies are willing to make that investment and take the risk that you might be throwing all the money away (if the idea doesn't) work if their IP is not protected so other parties sit back and let somebody else do the hard work so they can exploit it?

And in some cases it is very personal. I did a lot of work for a small company that developed a new approach to emission control, the idea was so simple that once you saw it you'd think why has nobody done that before? However the detailed analytical work to make it into a practical proposition took a lot of work and money, money raised by the company principals who in some cases literally bet their homes on it. All they had was their IPR, if anybody is going to bet everything they have developing an idea then I think they should be able to protect their IPR.

There is also a risk element. I have spent a significant part of my life in the design and verification of safety critical systems for power plants and ships. Reverse engineering of these systems is common (despite patents, licenses and other mechanisms to protect IPR), the problem is that unless you understand the maths, calculations and design basis of those systems then you can very quickly end up in a highly undesirable situation.

 

[svart-hvitt]

I didn't say copyright laws have been the source of human and societal progress, I said that if you want people to invest the time and effort involved in developing new technology then they will expect some reward for commercialising that tech and expect their intellectual property to be protected.

The last 100 years have seen a massive acceleration in the pace of technological progress and the concept of IPR is pivotal to facilitating the development behind that progress. In some cases the level of investment needed to develop and commercialise an idea is in many billions and involves huge numbers of people who all expect to be paid. How many bodies are willing to make that investment and take the risk that you might be throwing all the money away (if the idea doesn't) work if their IP is not protected so other parties sit back and let somebody else do the hard work so they can exploit it?

And in some cases it is very personal. I did a lot of work for a small company that developed a new approach to emission control, the idea was so simple that once you saw it you'd think why has nobody done that before? However the detailed analytical work to make it into a practical proposition took a lot of work and money, money raised by the company principals who in some cases literally bet their homes on it. All they had was their IPR, if anybody is going to bet everything they have developing an idea then I think they should be able to protect their IPR.

There is also a risk element. I have spent a significant part of my life in the design and verification of safety critical systems for power plants and ships. Reverse engineering of these systems is common (despite patents, licenses and other mechanisms to protect IPR), the problem is that unless you understand the maths, calculations and design basis of those systems then you can very quickly end up in a highly undesirable situation.

FWIW,

It strikes me that what in many people’s eyes is one of the wonders of modern age, Wikipedia, is based on extracting, cut and paste from available sources.

So I wonder if one’s view on intellectual property is often steered, controlled by big corporates instead of a discourse that has society at large as its prime interest.

 

[Cosmik]

Right out of the playbook:

1) Attack the messenger/critic

I think that another personality-based aspect of MQA is that its plausibility derives only from the plausibility of its creator Bob Stuart. The same vague technical-sounding claims being made by some unknown character in the audio industry would be dismissed as rubbish. MQA's success derives purely from a personality rather than its technical merit - which is impossible to verify, being the implementation of a self-referencing circular assertion that requires arbitrary fiddling with the maths of digital audio which no one has ever demonstrated is meaningful. Rather the opposite.

The technical aspects are forgotten - because they are meaningless - and MQA becomes nothing more than a battle of personalities and/or marketing strategies. Hence Amir's comment.

 

[JJB70]

FWIW,

It strikes me that what in many people’s eyes is one of the wonders of modern age, Wikipedia, is based on extracting, cut and paste from available sources.

So I wonder if one’s view on intellectual property is often steered, controlled by big corporates instead of a discourse that has society at large as its prime interest.

If you are cutting and pasting you are investing a marginal amount of time and not risking any capital, not having to employ staff etc. That's very different from funding a technical technology development program.

However, if looking at just books. If a person writes a book then they own the copyright. If they want to waive that copyright then they obviously can, however if they rely on books to provide their income then they can legitimately object to people copying without paying royalties or using their ideas.

 

[andreasmaaan]

FWIW,

It strikes me that what in many people’s eyes is one of the wonders of modern age, Wikipedia, is based on extracting, cut and paste from available sources.

So I wonder if one’s view on intellectual property is often steered, controlled by big corporates instead of a discourse that has society at large as its prime interest.

Also FWIW, there may be intellectual property in the way information is expressed, but there has never been intellectual property in the information itself.

Of course, the law is absurdly complex on the distinction between information and its expression, but suffice it to oversimplistically say that it is not illegal to take information and express it in one's own words (as is done on Wikipedia, unless sources are plagiarised of course).